1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recoil starter for starting an engine by rotating a crankshaft by rotating a rope reel by pulling a recoil rope wound around the rope reel and transmitting rotation of the rope reel to a drive pulley or the like connected to the crankshaft of the engine via a one-dimensional rotating mechanism of a ratchet mechanism or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is known a recoil starter for starting an engine by rotating a crankshaft of the engine by rotatably providing a rope reel formed with a reel portion at an outer peripheral portion thereof at inside of a case, rotating the rope reel in an engine starting direction by pulling one end portion of a recoil rope wound around the rope reel and drawn out to outside of the case, and transmitting rotation of the rope reel to a rotating member of a flywheel magnet, a drive pulley or the like coupled to the crankshaft of the engine. According to the above-described recoil starter, between the rope reel rotated by operating to pull the recoil rope and the rotating member attached to the crankshaft of the engine, there is provided a ratchet mechanism operated to transmit rotation to a side of the rotating member by being engaged with the rotating member when the rope reel is rotated in the engine starting direction by the recoil rope, and preventing rotation of the rope reel in an inverse direction from being transmitted to the side of the rotating member and preventing rotation on a side of the engine from being transmitted to a side of the rope reel by being separated from the rotating member when the rope reel is rotated in a direction inverse to the engine starting direction in order to wind back the recoil rope drawn out from rope reel and after the engine has been started.
There is known the ratchet mechanism of the recoil starter in which there is formed a ratchet member one end side of which is supported rotatably by the rope reel and which is made to be pivoted in an outer diameter direction by rotating the rope reel, a peripheral wall in a cylindrical shape is formed on an outer peripheral side of the ratchet claw, a drive pulley formed with an opening engageable with the ratchet claw is arranged at the peripheral wall, a front end portion of the ratchet claw is projected from the opening to an outer peripheral side of the drive pulley, and the ratchet claw is engaged with an edge of the opening of the drive pulley to thereby transmit rotation on a side of the rope reel to the drive pulley. Since the ratchet claw is supported at two locations of an inner peripheral side and an outer peripheral side of the opening of the drive pulley, a load applied on the ratchet claw can be alleviated, and light-weighted formation and small-sized formation of the recoil starter can be achieved.
According to the above, it is shown that the ratchet claw is formed by a plate-like material constituted by bending a steel plate having a comparatively thin thickness in an angle-like shape, an axially supporting portion is formed by rolling one end portion of the ratchet claw in a cylindrical shape, the axially supporting portion is pivotably contained at inside of a containing hole formed at a side face of the rope reel, and rotation on the side of the rope reel is transmitted to the side of the drive pulley by engaging the ratchet claw in the plate-like shape with the edge of the opening formed at the peripheral wall of the drive pulley, and by forming to work the drive pulley by a synthetic resin, light-weighted formation thereof is achieved and the drive pulley can be fabricated inexpensively, as disclosed in JP-UM-A-2-124268.
According to the above, there are formed the openings formed at the peripheral wall in the cylindrical shape of the drive pulley for engaging with the above-described ratchet claws at six locations at equal intervals in a circumferential direction, and the side edges on both sides of the respective openings are formed by faces substantially in parallel with each other or in parallel with radial direction lines extended from a center of the drive pulley. When the directions of the side edges of the respective openings are formed in this way, in the case of forming to work the drive pulley by a synthetic resin, the drive pulley needs to be formed by a number of portions constituted by moving forming dies in respectively different directions and the cost is increased in forming the dies and in forming steps. Further, a number of pieces of the drive pulleys cannot be formed to work to hamper the forming cost from being reduced.